It's strange. Obesity is our biggest preventable health problem, and it gets almost no attention in the media or by public officials. We heard endlessly from health officials and news media personalities to wash our hands, stay indoors, wear a mask, get vaccinated, but nothing about eating healthier, eating less, exercising more?
"Obesity steals more years than diabetes, tobacco, high blood pressure and high cholesterol -- the other top preventable health problems that cut Americans' lives short, according to researchers who analyzed 2014 data."
It should also be part of the climate change discussion:
"Overall, being obese is associated with about 20% more greenhouse gas emissions (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide) than being a normal weight"
> It's strange. Obesity is our biggest preventable health problem, and it gets almost no attention in the media or by public officials.
I have seen many, many reports, news specials, CDC website reports about being overweight and obese driving increases in health risks. Michelle Obama, as First Lady, was on top of it and reformed the food pyramid nonsense.
Really? There are multi-billion dollar industries catering to the obesity issue - health food, supplements, exercise equipment, exercise gurus.
Employers offering incentives since it leads to lower insurance costs.
In the USA, health food options have grown tremendously in the last 10 years, but at the same time obesity has gone up.
It's strange. Obesity is our biggest preventable health problem, and it gets almost no attention in the media or by public officials. We heard endlessly from health officials and news media personalities to wash our hands, stay indoors, wear a mask, get vaccinated, but nothing about eating healthier, eating less, exercising more?
Because it's been going on in the background so long, that it became part of the background.
Also, it's not like it's not noticed by public officials. You hear all the time in recommendations and guidelines we should lose weight and get more exercise.
That said, I would also note that current public health policy is basically a failure in that we largely failed to move the needle regarding the obesity pandemic or getting the recommended exercise dose.
Societies with easy access to calories and sugar/carbs/sat fats and reduction in movement and increase in sitting have more obesity, right?
I am doubtful that easy access to calories means more obesity. The Japanese is a wealthy society and is less obese than the American, for example.
Also, societies that move more doesn't necessary have an increase in TDEE as society that move less. Your basal metabolism adjusts and accounts for physical activities. you would probably need to go to extreme to adjust your TDEE upward.
I’m sure there are cultural and genetic components also, but you can simply compare parents and their children over the past few decades in countries with obesity problems to control for some of that.
If you look at it from a global perspective, there are more forests now, up by 7% since 1982. Some regions see decreased life, others increased life:
"Here we analyse 35 years’ worth of satellite data and provide a comprehensive record of global land-change dynamics during the period 1982–2016. We show that—contrary to the prevailing view that forest area has declined globally—tree cover has increased by 2.24 million km2 (+7.1% relative to the 1982 level). This overall net gain is the result of a net loss in the tropics being outweighed by a net gain in the extratropics."
It is not bad as long as you own stocks, which you can exchange into material goods.
Like some of my friends can afford a decent house, but prefer renting because it gives greater flexibility (they can rent a small flat in the center of the city in a walking distance to the office and meet with friends often while they don't have children instead of investing into big house in the suburbs with empty rooms they wouldn't use).
But if you own nothing and don't save, this is bad.
The UK did a great thing last year, they increased to minimum payment to private pension (equivalent of US 401k) to 8% of salary, so even irresponsible people will have some savings at retirement age. And I think the UK should continue gradually increasing these contributions.
> even irresponsible people will have some savings at retirement age
Ah, there are enough loopholes that a lot of people still won't end up with any savings at retirement age.
There are a lot of self-employed people in the UK, at the low end of pay (gig workers, freelance cleaners, graphic designers, etc) and high end (consultants, IT contractors etc), and bootstrapping entrepreneurs (pay all over the place). The pension 8% doesn't apply to any of them.
I can't believe this nonsense. This is Maoist at the core - it's requiring everything in our language and culture to be re-examined under a petty lens and for what? To appease people who could possibly complain about something? To me it sounds like cultural decay - when life is too good and consumer good are in abundance, petty people have to come up with new problems and dragons to slay to justify their $60,000 administrator salaries.
> The term picnic is often associated with lynchings of Black people in the United States, during which white spectators were said to have watched while eating, referring to them as picnics or other terms involving racial slurs against Black people.
The false etymology persists despite the Oxford English Dictionary definition: "A method or procedure derived entirely from practice or experience, without any basis in scientific knowledge; a roughly practical method." The OED dates the phrase's first reference to 1692.
In the Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, "rule of thumb" is additionally defined as a method by which brewers once tested the temperature of a batch of beer: They dipped a thumb in the brew.
Highlighting "a very very small niche" of politicians/activists isn't really debunking the "a very very small niche of the police reform community" claim.
I like Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, but they can hardly be claimed to be the mainstream portion of Congress, or even Congressional Democrats.
The entire point of the slogan is that it can reasonably be interpretted as both a call for measured reform and a demand for radical change. Activists switch between these interpretations at will.
Also, within activist circles, the most radical interpretation always wins. You're on HN and so you claim you want to "divert resources" but within "ACAB circles," the winning argument is always the most radical (prison abolition, prison = slavery, police are modern slave catchers, violence against police is justified). This pull to the extremes is what disturbs me about radical movements. It's possible that these movements have a positive effect when they interact with moderates and some kind of compromise is struck but the movements themselves are quite scary.
No True Scotsman defense incoming, as people pretend that a “very very small niche” is what it means when high-profile congressional members put forth positions that are not vigorously denounced by the media and their political allies.
